TCS Daily

"All Intifada, All the Time"

While the West is basking in the tunes of
Christmas carols, a different tune is being played by the two leading Jihadi TV
channels, al Jazeera and al Manar. The radical Sunni al Jazeera, broadcasting
from Qatar, the flagship of anti-Western Islamist propaganda,
is funded and tolerated by the Qatari royal family, reportedly to the tune of
$30 million a year. It has become the main conduit of Al Qaeda tapes to
the Arab and Muslim world, suggesting an exclusive arrangement with the elusive
jihadi leaders Usama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri.

Al Manar, a Shi'i satellite and cable
operation out of Lebanon, belongs to Hizballah and funded by the Islamic
Republic of Iran to the tune of $15 million a year, and is even more
anti-American in its pitch. Both channels are available world wide, including
the US, via satellite. Canadian cable operators are now
offering al Jazeera and al Manar via easily obtained and cheap subscriptions.

Robert Spencer,
Director of the NGO Jihad Watch says that al Jazeera provides foreign-based
terrorists with a source of news, encouragement and instruction. It serves
radical Muslims as a useful recruiting tool. For jihadist recruiters, al
Jazeera is like an electronic madrassa beaming the teachings and perspective of
radical Islam into the living rooms of Muslims around the world twenty four
hours a day, Spencer says.

Since 9/11, the U.S. Government has expressed its
concerns about al Jazeera's biased coverage to the Emir of Qatar. A State
Department official told CNN that Secretary of State Colin Powell and the emir
"had a frank exchange" on the issue and "there should have been
no mistake of where we are coming from." Condoleezza Rice has also
criticized the channel. No wonder: typical coverage would include the following
pictures shown in quick succession: tiny bodies of Iraqi children supposedly
killed by American bombs, woman in a chador sobbing, a giant American B-52
bomber, and fireballs lighting up the Baghdad
night sky. One American observer in the Middle East
calls al Jazeera "All Intifada, all the time."

Al Manar, however, makes al Jazeera look like PBS. A
new study by Avi Jorisch, a former Pentagon Arab media and terrorism expert,
published by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, exposes this
deadly media weapon wielded by Hizballah. "The United
States is one of al-Manar's main targets.
Hizballah views America
as a terrorist state... Al Manar is used to further that perception, attempting
to win the hearts and minds of Arab and Muslim viewers by waging a powerful public
relations campaign against the 'Great Satan.'" writes Jorisch.

He quotes Sheikh Nasrallah, Hizbollah's Secretary
General in a March 2002 speech,

"Today
the main source of evil in this world, the main source of terrorism... the
central threat to international peace and to the economic development... the
main threat to the environment, the main source of ... killing and turmoil, and
civil wars, and regional wars is the United
States of America. The American political
discourse is to terrorize the countries of the world. American is a beast in
all meanings of the world. A beast that is hungry for power and blood."

Al Manar focuses much of its broadcasts on alleged
American atrocities towards Native Americans, blacks, and the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, while stating that U.S.
"oppression" continues unabated. Al Manar brainwashes its audience,
including its viewers in the U.S.,
that America's foreign
policy is designed to "enslave the governments and people of the Middle
East and their resources."

Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, Hizbollah's
spiritual leader, as well as Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the late Ayatollah Khomeini are often
quoted on al Manar vilifying America,
its leaders and its policies.

Al Manar constantly calls upon the "Arab
masses" to "mobilize" and "resist" the U.S.
presence in Iraq and
elsewhere, while it glorifies murder-suicide bombings against civilians in Israel.
While al Manar and Hizballah officials profess their neutrality towards the
American people in interviews in English, Jorisch writes, the channel often
quotes its leader Ayatollah Fadlallah's vitriol, "The instincts of
American people are filled with hatred for Arabs and Muslims."

In fact, according to Hizballah, it is the U.S.
and Israel
which are "terrorist states" whereas "jihad, resistance,
martyrdom... is actually removing terrorism. Humanity will not be blessed
without removing America's type of terrorism...We have to continue our jihad in
all different types in order to save humanity from the (American) terrorist
thinking."

Little response has come to date from Washington
to this 24/7 global brainwashing. Today, al Jazeera is launching its English
language global satellite channel. Al Manar is broadcasting unabated, and its
popularity is growing. Al Qaeda is recruiting hundreds, if not thousands,
through chat rooms around the world. Jihadi websites are proliferating like
poisonous mushrooms, in Arabic, English, French, Farsi, Urdu, Uzbek, and in the
languages of the Indian subcontinent and East Asia.
After 9/11 the CIA experienced an acute shortage of funds and lacked the
qualified linguists who would be needed just to keep track of these spewing
Niagaras of hatred. The battle of ideas has thus far been an American weak spot
in the war on terror.

In the second Bush Administration it is imperative to
go beyond the Radio Sawa and Al Hurra TV channel funded by the U.S Government
to answer the jihadi propaganda. It was inconceivable that Der Sturmer,
the propaganda sheet put out by Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels,
would have been allowed to circulate unchallenged in the Allied countries
during World War II. Today, it is simply self-defeating for the West to permit
American, French and other Western satellites and cable systems to carry al
Jazeera and al Manar.

The intelligence community has yet to develop a
capable covert political action arm, which would launch or support liberal and
pro-Western TV channels, radio stations and web sites to counter the media
promoting radical Islamist hatred of either the Sunni and Shi'a brands.

The State Department has yet to develop a
comprehensive strategy, which would demand U.S.-friendly Muslim regimes to
bring government-funded mosques, school curricula, and university education
into harmony with the rest of the planet -- multicultural and theologically
messy.

On al Jazeera and al Manar, preachers and
propagandists are still calling for to the death to the infidels. Somewhere, another
ignorant 16 year old is being recruited by an al Qaeda operative in an on-line
chat room, another "mother of shahid" is being given her thirty
seconds of global glory in return for the willful death of her child and the
murder of many others. It is time to stop the bloody charade of the global
electronic jihad.